Sunday, September 13, 2015

Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru by Tera Lynn Childs

The Basics:Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru by Tera Lynn ChildsEntangled CrushYABook 1 in the Creative HeArts seriesPublished September 14, 2015Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.AmazonKoboGoodreads

Why I picked up this book:

I was looking for some good YA to read.Blurb:

When life gives you a blank canvas, make art.

Sloane Whitaker hates everything about moving to Texas. She hates leaving behind her friends and half her family in New York, starting over senior year at Austin’s NextGen Academy, and having to say she lives in Texas. Most of all, she hates that it’s all her fault. If she wants to earn her way back to the Big Apple, she has to prove she can still be the perfect daughter.

Which means no vandalism art, no trouble at school, and absolutely no Tru Dorsey, her serial screw-up neighbor, who loves nothing more than pushing her buttons.

But from the moment he vaults onto the roof outside her bedroom, there is something about him that makes her want to break every rule. Suddenly it’ s not the ten things she hates about Tru that are at the top of her list. It’s the ten reasons she doesn’t want to be without him.

My Thoughts:

Ten Things Sloane Hates About Tru is a lovely take on the new girl romance. This YA romance sub-genre often portrays the new girl as either catnip for boys or as a social pariah. I thought this book managed to depict realistically the way that the new student edges into the social fabric of a school, not necessarily fully embraced but not fully reviled either. Tru and Sloane are both very strong characters. Tru's got crazy inner strength, he has this lovely sense of play, and he carries so much emotional weight on his poor (but apparently quite handsome) shoulders. I was intrigued by the amount of freedom he had in his life, by some of the choices he made personally. For her part, Sloane is an excellent balance of angst and teenage resilience. There's a lot to unpack in the entire experience of her being in Texas, at a new arts school, rather than back home in New York. I won't go into details, because many of them are the heart of the book, but suffice to say that I thought this complex situation was written very well, and in a way that I thought was believable for the character. Now, there's a lot going on in this book. Sloane's new to the school, so we're discovering it and the myriad ways it differs from a conventional school. She's just moved because of traumatic reasons, so there's a lot to address there. There's schemes afoot at school, plus there's Tru's whole... Tru-ness. There was a delightful amount of story inside this YA package. It hit all my buttons for being something that felt right on the delightful fiction-y side of possible, and I loved it for that.When I finished reading the book, I was really frustrated by the number of things that went unanswered. I picked up on some undercurrents (they're not super subtle so no gold star for me) that were not directly addressed, plus there's was no easy 'tied-up with a ribbon' ending for much of what Tru and Sloane were coping with. I immediately went in hunt of information about this book as the start of a series--the usual YA trilogy, perhaps? The author reveals on her blog that this is the start of a *twelve book* planned series, with three total to focus on this couple. TWELVE! I don't know that I'll make it to the end, but I do want to know what happens next for Tru and Sloane, at the least.Bottom line:Grab this one if you love contemporary YA. I think it's quite a good read!4.5 starsFor fans of YA romance, complex characters, teen dramaDon't just take my word for it though! I've gathered up a couple of other blog reviews, so check them out for some other opinions!Literary-ly Obsessed